Ken Griffin Says CEOs Find Trump’s Interference ‘Distasteful’
The billionaire Citadel founder hinted he could run for political office or work in government in the future
Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin criticized the Trump administration’s interference into the day-to-day business of American companies and raised concerns about self-serving decisions made by government officials.
“When the U.S. government starts to engage in corporate America in a way that tastes of favoritism, I know for most CEOs that I’m friends with, they find it incredibly distasteful,” Griffin said in a conversation at the WSJ Invest Live event Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Fla. “Most CEOs just don’t want to find themselves in the business of having to, in some sense, suck up to one administration after another to succeed in running their business.”
Griffin faulted the federal government for investing in private-sector companies, a practice that he said also happened in the Obama and Biden administrations. Under President Trump, Griffin said he was also bothered by business deals that benefited family members of the president and administration officials, such as when lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal bought a 49% stake in the Trump family’s nascent cryptocurrency firm just before the inauguration. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on the $500 million investment.
https://www.wsj.com/business/ken-griffin-says-ceos-find-trumps-interference-distasteful-3c388e8f
The billionaire investor Ken Griffin has accused Donald Trump’s administration of “enriching” its families, and criticised its interference in American businesses as “distasteful”.